But Emerson has his difficulties with all the poets. Homer is too
literal, Milton too literary, and there is too much of the whooping
savage in Whitman. He seems to think the real poet is yet to
appear; a poet on new terms, the reconciler, the poet-priest,--one
who shall unite the whiteness and purity of the saint with the
power and unction of the sinner; one who shall bridge the chasm
between Shakespeare and St. John. For when our Emerson gets on his
highest horse, which he does only on two or three occasions, he
finds Shakespeare only a half man, and that it would take Plato and
Manu and Moses and Jesus to complete him. Shakespeare, he says,
rested with the symbol, with the festal beauty of the world, and
did not take the final step, and explore the essence of things, and
ask, "Whence? What? and Whither?" He was not wise for himself; he
did not lead a beautiful, saintly life, but ate, and drank, and
reveled, and affiliated with all manner of persons, and quaffed the
cup of life with gusto and relish. The elect, spotless souls will
always look upon the heat and unconscious optimism of the great
poet with deep regret. But if man would not become emasculated, if
human life is to continue, we must cherish the coarse as well as
the fine, the root as well as the top and flower. The poet-priest
in the Emersonian sense has never yet appeared, and what reason
have we to expect him? The poet means life, the whole of life,--all
your ethics and philosophies, and essences and reason of things, in
vital play and fusion, clothed with form and color, and throbbing
with passion: the priest means a part, a thought, a precept; he
means suppression, expurgation, death.
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